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Excerpts from Big Tobacco Keeps Thumb on Makers of Stop-Smoking Aids -- Memos show cigarette firms pressured manufacturers of nicotine gums and patches to mute their message.

By MYRON LEVIN, Los Angeles Times [02/14/99]

Cigarette makers and the drug firms that market nicotine gum and patches would seem to be natural enemies, at war in a multibillion-dollar market of people hooked on nicotine. Yet a peaceful coexistence has reigned between them since nicotine replacement products were introduced in the 1980s to help smokers kick the habit.

The quit-smoking aids are widely advertised, and in recent years have joined such remedies as Advil, Tums and Robitussin on a list of the country's top-selling over-the-counter medicines. Yet they are promoted in a manner certain to minimize conflict with cigarette manufacturers.

Veterans of the smoking wars think they know why.

For at least a decade, Philip Morris sought to intimidate drug firms marketing the stop-smoking products, using the threat of economic reprisals to make them tone down their ads and refrain from supporting the anti-smoking cause, according to once-secret documents from the world's biggest cigarette maker. Philip Morris officials declined interview requests.

R.J. Reynolds, the second biggest U.S. tobacco company, also was engaged in some of the efforts, documents and interviews show. Pressure tactics were exerted against at least two major drug firms between 1982 and 1992, although they may have continued beyond that date. A nonconfrontational marketing approach for the nicotine products remains in use today.

Moreover, within the last three years, a major worldwide supplier of cigarette filters to the tobacco industry has become a power in the gum and patch business, thus playing in both arenas of the nicotine market.

Drug firms say their ads are not intended to appease the tobacco industry, but rather aim for the best approach to boosting sales. Even so, their marketing message is the same one that cigarette makers sought to dictate in the past by threatening to cancel supply contracts with the drug firms' corporate parents, internal memos show. Rather than attack cigarettes directly or implore all smokers to quit, their ads target the narrow band of smokers who are currently trying to quit--offering a product that can help ease their nicotine cravings.

As ads for top-selling Nicorette gum put it, "You can do it. Nicorette can help." It's a catchy slogan, but also consistent with guidelines tobacco executives sought to impose when the gum was introduced. For example, a 1985 Philip Morris memo cited the tobacco firm's "understanding" with the marketer of Nicorette that it would avoid "emotional . . . pleas to stop smoking" and advertise "strictly on the basis of 'if you want or need to quit, we have the product.' "

Literature for Doctors' Offices

Among their grievances: Merrell Dow had prepared literature for doctors' offices urging smokers to quit; supported a study concluding that smokers incur higher medical costs than nonsmokers; and encouraged workers to quit smoking at the very Dow plant that made chemicals for Philip Morris.

"We had been assured that Nicorette would have a low-key introduction and would be aimed only at those smokers who had to stop for medical reasons," the memo said. "Dow continually insisted that they were not taking an anti-cigarette industry position." But "the recent spate of activity can only be interpreted as a conscious corporate decision that Nicorette is more important than the Philip Morris [and other tobacco] business," the memo said. Dow "cannot realistically expect a customer to spend millions of dollars for materials when the profits from those sales . . . are used to attack that customer's product."

Dow sought to make amends, and was rewarded a few months later when Philip Morris resumed a portion of the chemical purchases, said an Oct. 25, 1984, memo.

Dow assured Philip Morris it was "committed to avoid contribution to the anti-cigarette effort," the memo said. And in an extraordinary gesture of appeasement, Merrell Dow president David Sharrock informed tobacco executives that he personally had begun "screening advertising and promotional materials to eliminate any inflammatory anti-industry statements."

Memo Took Stock of Company Efforts

Several months later, a September 1985 memo took stock of Philip Morris' "ongoing efforts to 'tone down' " ads for Nicorette. It said "some progress" had been made and that continuing as a Dow customer should have "an ameliorating influence on Nicorette promotions."

Philip Morris used a similar strategy several years later when Swiss chemical giant Ciba-Geigy began marketing Nicorette under license in Europe, according to internal Philip Morris memos.

A memo in January 1988 urged retaliation against Ciba. A boycott or "even a Philip Morris-funded negative publicity campaign . . . would send a strong message to a few other multinational corporations who could be investigating possible opportunities in the growing 'anti-tobacco' industry," the memo said.

It's uncertain if the recommendation was followed. But four years later Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds did put pressure on Ciba when it launched its Habitrol nicotine patch in the U.S. Ciba was a big supplier of agricultural chemicals, including products used by tobacco farmers. Accordingly, the two cigarette makers and a North Carolina growers group implored Ciba's agricultural chemicals division to intercede with its pharmaceutical branch. The goal: to assure "more appropriate advertising for this product in the future," the memo said.

The mission was accomplished.

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